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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks of J. Brian Atwood
September 10, 1998
The Council on Foreign Relations "Development and a Dangerous World"
Washington, D.C.
As were many of you, I was drawn to a career in international affairs because it seemed like the most interesting profession one could imagine. Recent weeks have more than met my expectations. Reading the international section of a newspaper has taken on the aura of reading a potboiler whose characters and plots never cease to amaze. But as Mark Twain commented, "Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth is not." Indeed, lately in foreign affairs we have seen a number of plot twists few imagined even a year ago.Not a day goes by where financial markets do not seem to be combatting some near-death experience. Global markets have teetered on the edge as Russia has devalued the ruble and the Russian government has struggled to cope with events moving at a dizzying pace. Europe's economic powerhouses have looked to the East with sudden trepidation, wondering what each day's trading will bring. New financial concerns have begun to ripple in Latin America as talk of currency devaluations has gained momentum. Asia also continues to give the markets jitters as investors ponder whether Indonesia and Japan have a real commitment to lasting economic and social reform.
The IMF and the World Bank have stretched their resources dangerously thin as they have rushed from brushfire to brushfire. Crisis management has become the norm. Thus far, we have seen large bailout packages help the global economy successfully avoid the economic meltdown that everyone fears. But we also know full well that emergency packages are no substitute for building real institutional capacity in these key transition countries. No bailout package will quickly bring order to the Duma, easily reform Russia's banking system or improve tax collection and the rule of law.
No amount of lending was sufficient, in and of itself, to have convinced former President Suharto that practicing nepotism, corruption and strong-armed politics wasn't a good idea. For countries to effectively manage their own economies, there is no proxy for strong, transparent local institutions.Recent weeks have brought us much more than economic crises. In Sudan and Afghanistan, the U.S. military struck back at the forces of terror after the bombings of innocent civilians in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi. While much attention has focused on Bin Laden and his network, there has been far less coverage of the conditions in Sudan and Afghanistan that have proved such fertile breeding grounds for terrorists.
Both nations virtually define the term "failed state." Both nations' long-running civil wars have created humanitarian tragedies of terrible proportions. In the misery that is life in Sudan and Afghanistan, it is no surprise that violence has become a first resort. The dirty business that takes place in failed states has a proven track record of creating "blow-back" felt by all the major powers.In Central Africa, we have seen a spreading conflict that threatens to harden divisions among some of Africa's most important nations. The latest round of fighting in Congo, while complex, can be traced in a fairly direct line back to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. It is almost as if the conflict in the Congo has brought all of Africa's crises together in convenient one-stop shopping: leadership divisions in the Southern Africa Development Community; Angola's stalled transition out of civil conflict; Congo's history of lost hope; Rwanda and Uganda's continuing campaign to deal with insurgents operating out of Eastern Congo; arms trading, ethnic divisions and more.
In Kosovo, we have seen the Western powers walk a delicate line in dealing with a separatist movement that has been brutally repressed by a government whose human rights record is abysmal. The pieces of the Kosovo crises are tangled around everything from Bosnia reconstruction to who has the historical right to claim the name of Macedonia. The number of crises in the news have been so abundant that we have seen major issues like the potential transition in Nigeria, nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent and a conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea pushed out of the public eye. Lately, there has simply been far too much going on in the world for the New York Times or The Washington Post to squeeze it all into four pages.
Daily it seems, we find ourselves confronted with not one, but many, foreign policy dilemmas that test all of our skills and capabilities as a nation. The question in today's dangerous world is: How do we, as a nation, respond to these very different, difficult and complex situations?
I thought Jim Mann put it nicely in a recent commentary in the LA Times when he noted that,
"For decades Americans believed they were on the verge of going to war against the Red Menace. Now, we assume that America is serenely secure, that the rest of the world is a bunch of Outer Slobovias, and that there can't be any legitimate reason for American involvement overseas. If there's a problem abroad, maybe somebody made it up, as in 'Wag the Dog.' The reality is otherwise. This country's continuing prosperity is to say the least not guaranteed. America's future depends on what happens in other countries."
Unfortunately, I am here today to tell you that we as a nation have slowly and surely undermined some of our most effective tools in dealing with today's very fluid international environment. As a nation, we have left both diplomacy and development slowly malnourish with vastly inadequate budgets, reduced staffs and a state of public opinion that seems only to embrace our work when our employees are killed in the line of fire.
These are strong words, I know. But for too long, we in the foreign policy community have gone all too quietly into the night. We have accepted drastically reduced budgets. We have written hostility to international engagement off as some curious piece of Americana. We have not stood our ground.
Let us just look at the contrast between diplomacy and development and the rest of our national security apparatus: intelligence and defense. Hardly a day goes by where we don't hear about the need to ramp up resources dedicated to the intelligence community.
Members of Congress troop before the microphones and demand more and better "humint," human intelligence from the field. We agree we need high-tech tools ranging from satellites, to computers and encryption devices to fight global terrorism. We hire more field agents to use time honored methods of gathering intelligence on the ground.In terms of defense, we as a nation have largely come to accept the Powell Doctrine. The Powell Doctrine was postulated by Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and grew out of his experiences ranging from Vietnam, to Somalia and the Gulf War.
To boil it down, the Powell Doctrine has several key points, as many of you already know. First, force should be used sparingly. But if used, force should be exercised decisively. Powell strongly opposed limited deployment of forces and argued that if the United States went into a conflict, it should go in big. The idea was to combine clearly defined diplomatic objectives with an overwhelming display of force. While some military scholars debate the merit of the Powell Doctrine, many people have accepted the idea that if you become involved in a conflict you should enter with sufficient resources to clearly triumph.Ironically, it seems as if we in the foreign policy community are operating under almost the exact reverse of the Powell Doctrine. This is a time when U.S. leadership is indispensable in dealing with economic and political transitions around the globe. Yet to fight our battle, we set out every day knowing that we can only respond with an underwhelming display of resources and capabilities. We are forced to accept a severely limited deployment of our diplomatic and development skills. Every day we are forced to make budget decisions that are a devil's bargain: Whether to cut back on people, training, programs, security or which countries that we operate in.
The idea of setting clear entry and exit strategies becomes almost impossible as we find ourselves spread thin around the globe. We find ourselves in a position where we are showing the flag without realistically believing that we can achieve fundamental change in a set period of time.If you still aren't convinced that diplomacy and development are practicing the opposite of the Powell Doctrine, one needs only to look at the cold hard budget figures. The numbers are stark. In real dollar terms, USAID's budget is 30 percent lower than it was in 1982.
Maybe I shouldn't complain: In real dollar terms, the entire 150 account is 43 percent lower than it was 1982. I have seen the staff of my agency reduced by 3,600 people, or about 34 percent, since 1993 alone. We have closed 28 missions around the globe. I can tell you with reasonable assurance that the appropriations levels currently being considered by the Congress do nothing to change this trend, nor do budget projections for the coming years.This dramatic compression of our ability to carry out diplomacy and development comes at a time when these functions could not be more vital to the national interest.
Consider the crises I rattled off at the beginning of my speech: Russia, Indonesia, events in the Congo, Nigeria, India and beyond. As diverse as the situations may be, they all share a common thread. In a very real sense, these are all crises of institutions. In each of these settings economic and political stability hinge on the ability of public institutions to deal with fundamental questions of democracy, public policy and sound economic decision-making.There is a certain gallows humor to the fact that just six months ago the foreign policy community seemed to be spending much of its time debating the premise forwarded, in slightly different forms, by Robert Kaplan and Fareed Zakaria.
These authors maintained that enlightened authoritarians -- such as President Suharto -- represented the best means for developing nations to secure lasting social and economic growth. Democracy was viewed as something of a luxury -- a Western invention -- that nations could get around to after successfully promoting economic development.Kaplan and Zakaria argued that because these enlightened autocracies were insulated from interest-group politics, they had greater freedom to act on behalf of economic development than democracies.
This new generation of more sophisticated strongmen were seen as being able to look past short-term issues in favor of the long-term welfare of a society by pursuing disciplined fiscal and monetary policies.But certainly the last two months have shown us that strong, democratic and transparent institutions are the soundest vehicle for advancing societies. In dealing with the complexity of transforming Russia's economy, there is no substitute for the rule of law and vibrant public decision-making mechanisms. Breaking the stranglehold of Russia's elites on economic reform will only happen from the bottom-up.
Similarly, if we hope to avert a civil war in Nigeria, there is no better hope than economic reform and a democratic political system that allows differences to be resolved without conflict. If we want to solve the issue of Kosovo, it won't be easy until we address the fundamental nature of an authoritarian regime in Belgrade.
The very of the global economy has placed a huge magnifying glass on the institutional structures of developing nations. Capital is incredibly fluid in today's world. Investors and multinational corporations can, and will, move their money out of countries when fault lines appear.
Again and again, we see that missteps by governments lacking public accountability can quickly lead to wholesale capital flight. Strong institutions are the only viable means to secure the triumphs that the end of the Cold War made possible and avert the staggering costs of failed states.Global Trends 2010, a study released last year by the CIA's National Intelligence Council, highlighted the importance of investments in development. The study found that growing populations, widening gaps between rich and poor, and continuing revolutions in communications have the potential to incite new civil and ethnic and civil conflicts, and could demand U.S. military intervention with increasing frequency.
Some have argued that unrest in places like Bosnia and Rwanda was a short-term phenomena brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union. These commentators pointed to similar periods of unrest following other major wars to bolster their argument. But the trends pointed to in the NIC study -- rapid population growth, the growing disparity between rich and poor and the fact that the whole world can now see how the other half lives -- are far more persistent trends.
The NIC study concluded that low-level conflicts will continue to present a real problem as developing country governments, facing the strain of expanding numbers of people, will find social cohesion much more difficult to maintain.
A staggering 95 percent of population growth is taking place in the developing world. Megacities, with populations over 10 million, will boom; Lagos, Nigeria, will be the world's fifth-largest city by 2005, with more than 15 million inhabitants. We will face increasing numbers of developing countries dominated by very young populations who have precious little economic opportunity.Richard Cooper, who headed the NIC noted, "Expectations and pressures on governments will be high to deliver things like sanitation and water. Failure to deliver on those expectations will feed unrest more easily than in the past."
What we see is a world where institutions are not only vital to macro-level issues like economic policy and social stability, but where these same institutions must be able to meet needs at the grassroots level or face mass unrest.So how do we build strong institutions in the developing world? Well, one of our main tools has always been through bilateral development programs. It takes long-term engagement, patience and a lot of elbow grease to effect meaningful changes in how institutions operate. A simple cash transfer, a crash course or even a high-profile campaign are no substitute for the grinding day-in day-out work that it takes to make institutions work and work well.
Institutional change is a major endeavor, and I am proud that the United States has had the vision since the Second World War to recognize that these investments are invaluable.Massive assistance to places like Korea, Greece, Japan and the Philippines helped them become nations better suited to handle adversity on their own. Perhaps the most important factor in bringing about South Korea's economic "miracle" of the last several decades was the fundamental turn-around in economic policies that took place under President Park during the first half of the 1960s. President Park was willing to turn to a cadre of well-trained South Korean economists and technically trained individuals for advice and strategy.
U.S. assistance made very important contributions to the South Korean economy that permitted President Park to move forward with reform. During the initial period of U.S assistance during the last half of the 1940s and 1950s, American aid sustained the country economically and helped stave off widespread starvation and instability in the aftermath of two devastating conflicts. Perhaps the most important contributions United States assistance made to South Korea's development was the advanced training thousands of Koreans received in the United States -- much of it in economics.
Training, education and the establishment of viable public institutions proved critical in supporting broad social and economic development. Creating the foundations for development through improvements in infrastructure, health systems and economic access also offered important contributions to transforming South Korea. The fact that Korea has embraced sound institutions and a broader concept of civil society in recent years also positioned that country to deal with the recent bout of Asian flu better than many of its neighbors.
Today, we know the investments that will help developing societies improve prosperity. Years of field experience has given us models that work. We have professionals that can help nations build civil society, craft sound economic policy and improve living standards in leaps and bounds. We are not miracle workers, but with sufficient resources and real commitment we can get the job done. And when you open the international section of the paper it is hard to deny that this work is not more vital than ever.
But somehow, we in the foreign policy community allowed the end of the Cold War to lull many Americans, and many of their elected officials, into believing that our work as a nation was somehow done. In debates over balanced budgets and fiscal responsibility, we allowed America to take a path that is proving penny-wise and pound-foolish. Now, I know that many of you will say simply: "It is not our fault." Sure, it is easy to pin the blame on the public, the Congress, the Administration or even El Nino if you like.
But at the end of the day we must accept our own responsibility. It is incumbent upon us all to educate decision-makers, the media and the public. We need to be the ones to stand up and say that it is simply unacceptable for history's most powerful nation to decide that foreign affairs is not that important. We have become too complacent. If you read Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy almost every article on American leadership includes the same footnote saying that, of course, you would need resources to make this vision of America's foreign policy work.
Instead of making our lack of resources a footnote, it is now time to make this fact the body of the story we have to tell. We cannot lead with empty pockets. We cannot change the world without people in the field, and we must not abdicate our international leadership. Thank you.This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 18, 2001 |
